“Nice welcome for the mother of your child.” Janet glanced past him into the house. “Is she there?”
“No. She’s skiing.”
“Of course she is. Silly question given that she has your genes and was brainwashed as a toddler.” Janet shrugged. “So I’ll come in and wait.”
“Wait for what? What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to see my daughter.”
“The one you kicked out last winter?” Tyler snarled the words. “The one you conveniently forget about for most of the year?”
“I didn’t kick her out. She was going through a difficult phase.” Her gaze shifted from his. “She was hard to handle.”
“All the more reason to keep her close.”
“Don’t judge me, Tyler, when you had nothing at all to do with raising her.”
“Your choice, not mine. And we’ve already said everything there is to say on that topic.”
“She’s been living with you a year, and suddenly you’re an expert on parenting? Since when do you have any idea what a kid needs?”
“I’m not an expert—” his mouth felt as if he’d swallowed sand “—but I know kids should have stability. Someone they can depend on to always be there.”
“When have you always been there for anyone? I doubt you can even spell commitment let alone practice it.”
“I’m there for her. I would have had her from the beginning. I wanted that.”
“Stop kidding yourself, Tyler.” The smile vanished. “You were traveling the world with the ski team. It was like playing in a sweet shop. Do you think I didn’t see the news coverage? You couldn’t keep your pants zipped for five minutes. If you’d had Jess, would you seriously have been prepared to give all that up? Maybe I should have done that. Maybe I should have given her to you. That would have been a better punishment than keeping her from you.”
“Punishment?” Five minutes with Janet, and he felt as if he wanted to scrub her off his skin. It was always the same.
“You got me pregnant, Tyler! Do you know what that did to my life? I had plans, too! Things I wanted to do.”
“You kept Jess to punish me? What sort of a sick, twisted plan was that?”
“I should have let you take her and watched you try to juggle a toddler and a sex life. Think about it. A yelling baby, no sleep and no one to help out. That was my life.”
“What about her life? Did you think of that?”
“I took her. I gave her a home. And all the time I was reading this stuff about you partying. Four women in a hot tub?”
He didn’t bother telling her that particular story hadn’t been true. He was too busy remembering how insecure Jess had been when she’d arrived. “She thinks she ruined your life. She thinks you blame her.”
“She’s right that having her ruined my life, but she’s wrong to think I blame her. I don’t. I blame you.” Janet’s eyes met his. “You should have used a condom.”
“You shouldn’t have walked into the barn naked.”
Janet smiled. “You never did want to take responsibility for anything, did you?”
“I took responsibility for Jess,” he growled, “and as for the other—you could have handed me a condom.”
“So we’re equally to blame. There is no difference between us.”
“The difference is that I see Jess as the best thing that has happened in my life. You see her as a lifetime of payment for a childhood mistake.”
“Yes, I do. I wanted a termination but my parents stopped me. Did you know that?”
“No.” Tyler felt the blood drain out of his brain. He felt shaky. “I didn’t.”